


Drinking Games

by Sholio



Category: The Expanse (TV)
Genre: Between Seasons/Series, Drinking, Friendship, Gen, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 14:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29262090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: There's nothing like good company and a good drink. (Okay, maybe a terrible drink. But the company is good.)
Relationships: Klaes Ashford & Camina Drummer
Comments: 19
Kudos: 31
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	Drinking Games

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kalirush](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalirush/gifts).



It had been a long exhausting shift, all the more so because, between one minor emergency and another, Camina had spent most of it in the .3g of Medina Station's spinning drum. 

Her back hurt now in radiating waves, rippling down her shoulders and spreading through her pelvis. She had no choice about being in her office—there were reports to send to the Inners and authorizations that would not wait; she was even starting to have reluctant sympathy for Fred Johnson after finding out how much of administration was rote paperwork. She imagined she could feel her spine grinding together every time she moved. At least she hoped it was imagination. She didn't relish the idea of being back in the mech legs if something broke loose. Her last painkiller had been a long time ago. She was thinking longingly of the next one.

Her comm chimed. "Oye, bossmang," her communications engineer said. "Tynan just call in. They back from patrol, in dock soon. You say need to know."

"I do," she said, and felt a little bounce in her flagging strength. Painkillers and sleep soon, but first, something she had been looking forward to for _days._ She reached under her desk for the emergency painkiller half-dose and jabbed it in her thigh. As cool relief spread through her veins, she found the strength, after a moment, to hoist herself with some effort out of her seat.

She was down on the docks in time to meet Ashford coming through the airlock. 

"Back so soon?" she said, as he stepped off looking scruffy and as tired as she felt. "Ring is safe for another day, ke?"

"And I haven't been out of this suit in three day," Ashford retorted, rolling his shoulders. He narrowed his eyes at her. "You look like you shouldn't be on your feet."

She had thought she was hiding it better than that. "And you look and smell like spoiled cargo. Come this way." She caught hold of the sleeve of his flight suit and dragged him out of his debarking crew, the opposite direction around the docking ring.

"Ey, Camina, I need shower and sleep."

"You sure do," she said, and picked up her pace, scraping up reserves of energy from some nearly-exhausted well. "But first you see this."

She hauled him into a lift. Once they were underway and acceleration had equalized to inertia, she unlocked the grav boots and let herself float. It was the first time all shift that she hadn't felt like her spine was slowly grinding to dust, one vertebra at a time.

"You push yourself too hard," Ashford said, looking up at her. "Want to end up flat on your back again, back in surgery maybe? You put me in awkward position, Camina, have to run security and station too."

Camina scoffed, rotating slowly in the lift chamber as the lift banked at a junction and changed direction. It was still strange to her that they could joke about it. "You not exactly young yourself, pampa. Go out pirata-hunting like some young bravo, stroke out and where I am then?"

"Annoyed less, probably," Ashford said. "We there yet?"

"Almost." The lift was slowing, dropping into a cradle inside the drum, and the gravity of the drum caught it, and them. She gave herself a push into what had become _down_ , dropped to the deck, but it was a harder landing than she'd meant. Ashford caught her arm, steadied her automatically.

The lift doors opened on a stretch of drum space that had formerly been blank and empty corridors. Now it was under active construction. Sparks showered down from welding. There were signs dangling, halfway through being put up, and pallets of supplies blocking the way.

Like all good stations, Medina Station needed a shopping concourse.

 _That_ wasn't what she needed to show off. It had been a work in progress for weeks, and a few things had been open for a while now, particularly a trading exchange for goods. But there was something beyond that now, and Camina led him to it with a warm showing-off kind of glow.

The sign was a cheap holo, a flickering HYPERION above the bar. Jammed with patrons, of course. The first proper drinking establishment on Medina Station was naturally going to be. And, with one bar open, of course there was a flurry of copycats now, popping up all along the concourse with their half-finished facades and bars under construction. But only one was open for business yet.

"See, see?" Camina spread her hands, gesturing. "We proper station now. Got all the amenities."

"Or at least the important ones." Ashford looked up at the sign. "Your suggestion, ya?"

"Ha. Of course not. Oh, maybe put a bug in someone's ear. No big deal." She elbowed her way into the crowd, teeth gritted against the pain, and couldn't help but take a little satisfaction as they fell back and edged aside with a murmured "Bossmang" or two. "Buy you drink."

"In gravity, first night in? Camina," he said, giving her one of those looks that he might or might not deploy intentionally these days to wind her up. "Have to drag me back to quarters."

"What?" she said, and tapped the bar, caught the bartender's eye and got a nod. The bar top was already properly sticky, on its way to becoming a good old-fashioned Belter dive in just a few days. "Lost your station legs, pampa?"

"You are bad influence." He found a bar stool. They were a mismatched assortment, a mix of gleaming chrome fixtures from elsewhere on the station, and seats from junked ships, all mingled together. "And you going to have to grow a new liver, keep drinking on top of narcotic painkillers. Just saying."

"And you are not the boss of me," she said, and retrieved the two overfilled glasses along with a bottle of rotgut. She shoved one at him.

"Could almost think we're back on Ceres," Ashford said, after they tossed back the stinging, sour whiskey. Around them, Belters crowded up to the bar, jostling them. There was some degree of deference due to their positions, but not a whole lot, and so far, to Camina's relief, no one had tried to flag her down to make her sign something or settle a dispute. So far, so good. She was looking forward to inflicting a half-drunk Ashford on them if they tried.

"Oh, a little," she said, topping off their glasses. "But only a little. Is its own thing, this place."

"I'll drink to that," Ashford said, and did. Then made a face. "Agh, felota!"

"Yes, I know, it's terrible." Camina took another swig of hers just because she could. It was strongly alcoholic, and that was about all that could be said for it.

"Good for getting drunk on," Ashford allowed. "If you don't care for state of head, stomach, or liver in the morning."

"Are you here to complain or to drink?"

He laughed, and took a turn filling their glasses.

**Author's Note:**

> This is partly based on Ashford's comment in season four about searching all the bars on Medina Station for her - a warship wouldn't have bars, but a station would, so that's a nice little worldbuilding detail and got me wondering about the process of transforming a ship into a station. And it's also inspired by their conversation while trapped in 3x11, of course.


End file.
